Women should take a leaf from Queen Nzinga For Queen Nzinga (above), it was better to side with the devil than give in to the Portuguese

Ruth Butaumocho Managing Editor
During my formative years in high school, I was among legions of pupils in my history class who were intrigued about the story of Queen Anna Nzinga of the Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms,

With my former history teacher’s words echoing in my mind that “history should be up-lighting”, I would spend any available time to read through lar`ge volumes on the varying narratives of the charismatic Angolan pre-colonial queen.

In the absence of Google and equally fascinating characters, this was indeed a tall order.

Apart from her claim to fame of sitting on top of a man during negotiations, Queen Nzinga turned out to be more than just a leader of Angola’s Ndongo and Matamba’s kingdoms.

Some scholars even regarded her as a ruthless character, who kept male harems, tortured people and did all sorts of things in her endeavour to consolidate her power and conquer the Portuguese.

One minute she would be described as a royal woman with lots of concubines and the next revered as a military leader and aggressive warrior.

Reading through descriptions of Nzinga and how she survived after expulsion by the Portuguese, it was a taxing exercise to form an opinion of someone “born of a woman” and a woman for that matter who could do such a thing.

“How do I connect with the woman who did these things?” was the question that I would often ask myself whenever her name popped up during my history lessons.

But one needed to understand her motives — all Queen Nzinga was fighting for was to bring her kingdom back.

In her “unorthodox executions” of duty she probably concluded that it was better to side with the devil than give in to the Portuguese, whom she spent most of her life fighting.

Because of her role in standing up against the Portuguese centuries ago, Queen Nzinga is revered among icons who contributed to the freedom of the Angola we know today.

Never mind the so-called sordid acts she is said to have committed against Portuguese and men in general, she was indeed an empowerment figure, whose name is engraved among icons.

Many decades after her death, Queen Nzinga still exudes the aura of power.

Her narratives affirm hope even in the most difficult circumstances, particularly for the marginalised women.

Queen Nzinga is the subject of poems in her country, roads have been named after her and her life portrayed pictorially on the walls of schools.

Even in death, she carries the unshakeable tag that “she resisted the Portuguese.”

The Queen Nzinga narrative extols women to discard the victim card mentality and focus on what they can do for themselves and their communities.

More often than not, women fail to realise the potential they possess in their own space and what they are capable of doing and instead whine on peripheral and less defining issues such as shrinking spaces of opportunities between men and women.

It is a historical fact that unequal opportunities for both men and women exist, creating bottlenecks for the latter in political and economic spaces over the years.

Governments across the world have continued to pay lip service to gender equality and equity issues, despite the existence of legislation that speak to equality across the board.

Yes, women have for a long time been victims of the societal and patriarchal attitudes toward their ascendancy and might continue for another decade, unless women choose to focus on the positive narrative.

The danger in clinging to the victim mentality narrative instead of moving ahead is that people eventually eradicate the gains of the struggle that have been fought over the years.

The most worrying aspect of this mindset is that it creates a mentality that there are more handicaps than there actually are.

Ironically, the challenge with demanding playng the victim card  is that it paints everyone with so broad a brush that it becomes difficult to distinguish the good from the bad.

The fight for gender equality should not be lost.

We, however, believe that it has to be taken in context, identifying where the problem is without seeking to vilify and belittle people on the basis of their gender.

The existence of inequality does not mean that all women necessarily are victims and opportunities are non-existent if you dare to dream and transcend beyond your boundaries.

We have women in our midst who discarded the victim mentality and chose to thrive in the available spaces, despite an uneven playground.

Names that easily come to mind include Mrs Maureen Nyemba of Betta Balls Sports, Ms Susan Peters of Gibson Investments which houses Ebony Salons and Dr Divine Ndhlukula, founder of Securico Security.

Queen Nzinga could have succumbed to the Portuguese, like her brother.

She could have taken the easy way out and turned a blind eye to the problem of the slave trade because she was a woman.

She could have embraced her victimhood and continued to wallow in poverty.

But she chose to take the Portuguese head-on

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